What is your favourite book?
Tao Te Ching Specifically the DC Lau translation https://terebess.hu/english/tao/lau.html
I love the poetry focused version by Ursula K. Le Guin:
I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul. I would like that reader to see why people have loved the book for twenty-five hundred years.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson. It’s a book about math monks. It has a lot of interesting ideas about philosophy and the nature of the universe and so on. It’s the sort of book that has surprisingly a lot of heart for what you’d assume based on the above.
I love Neal Stephenson, and that might be my favorite as well
The one I think about most often is Hyperion, by Dan Simmons. Specifically the Priest’s tale and the Scholar’s tale.
Maybe not the best book I’ve ever read, but favourite for sure goes to Kafka on the Shore. Had me hooked the entire way through, and it’s a book I’ve thought of for years after reading it initially.
If I can pick another, Siddhartha is an all-time favourite too.
Kim (1901) by Rudyard Kipling is the story of a boy coming of age in colonial India. Kipling grew up in India himself, and the sheer richness of the many cultures that Kim experiences as he travels across India and up into the lower Himalayas with a Tibetan llama is mind-blowing. Meanwhile Kim is drawn into the “Great Game” of spying between the European powers. It’s a deeply moving and beautiful book. Best of all, you can download it for free in all the major ebook formats!
Cannery Row by Steinbeck
Steinbeck’s style is incredibly immersive. It has the perfect balance of illustrative/poetic/flowery descriptions and cerebral/analytical language. I love the characters and their antics, and how relatably they’re written. I can identify with their feelings and motives even though I’m the furthest thing from a bunch of 1930’s Californians.
My mom bought it for me to take on my high school band trip to San Francisco (which involved a long flight and some long bus rides). I think I remember more about the book than I do the trip :)
Steinbeck is just so special. Having grown up in California I appreciate his depictions of Monterey/Salinas, but his writing is just something else. Currently reading Travels with Charley for the first time and loving seeing the rest of the country through his eyes!
